The Coffee
by Lennart
Summary: What you end up drinking in this line of work.


TITLE: The Coffee  
AUTHOR: Lennart  
EMAIL: lennartcollins@hotmail.com  
SUMMARY: What you end up drinking in this line of work.  
RATING: PG  
WRITTEN: May 2001  
  
DISCLAIMER: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe and all characters  
within that universe belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  
  
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The Coffee  
  
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There's this trick I thought I'd never have to use, back when I was part of the Initiative team; you know, that time when I thought I was strong and moral and upright and doing a great service for God and country. I thought this trick was cheating. And I didn't cheat back then.  
  
Make Swiss Miss hot chocolate, but use coffee instead of water. Make one cup, and drink it straight down. More than one and you'll go into a jittery high that won't leave for about fourteen hours, and you're more likely to crawl out of your skin than be useful in the coming action. But one cup'll leave you awake, aware, and ready to do -- anything, at any time.  
  
I heard about this during training, years ago. Never thought I'd try it, because I never thought I'd need an extra boost to get the job done. Sleep? If whatever I was doing was really important, I'd live without a couple extra hours. Just for that night, or the next. And enthusiasm I'd have by the bucket, just ready to dump over the unsuspecting enemies -- they'd drown in my machismo when I stood heroically against the setting sun, with my weapon held at the ready in one hand, and I'd say something threatening while at the same time witty and highly memorable.  
  
I tried that the first time I went out on a training scenario, and got shot at the second I stood up for the sunset-pose. I can't remember what I was planning to say.  
  
The coffee, mixed with the hot chocolate, is some big nastiness. We're talking syrupy gunk that tastes three days old and like chocolate should be outlawed for health reasons. But the rush it sends down you when you drink it... it's worth the taste, and the feel, and the little warning that says, "Don't drink any more." Sugar and caffeine, and adrenaline just comes along for the ride. You wake up.  
  
I try to follow the guidelines when it comes to that coffee, the one drink rule. But there're mornings when that's a _tough_ rule to follow. The mornings when I know I'll need more than one cup to get up. South America, the tropics, jungle, it's something you think about when you visit the zoo and see the environments and think, so this is what it's like.   
  
Except it isn't.   
  
The air is a wet, steaming towel pressing against my face, always, and I can't breathe. Sweat coats, and coats, and I can make trails through the filth with my nails because I haven't gotten _nearly_ enough showers on a daily basis to keep cool (ha) and clean. Rain is hot. There're diseases here that require parasites to transmit them, to live under your skin and in your body, and those parasites are way too easy to get. Plants rot while they're growing.  
  
The smell -- decay, mud, shit, and stagnant water -- you can't wash that off in one shower here.   
  
The work they brought me for... it's standard. Same as the Initiative, except minus the inhumane torture and experimentation by evil doctors on powertrips. No jungle, though, so the program couldn't have been all bad. (I can get funny after a cup of this coffee. Watch me.) And what the group is having me do now... it really isn't that bad.  
  
But it happens _here_, in the jungle, and it's becoming a hell (outside and different from all the hells I've lived before this Buffy shadows college Iowa) I can't handle. You slow down in the jungle, the heat and the wet slow you down, and there are days when only that coffee'll wake you up, keep you moving, let you pick up your weapon and point it at the enemy. Whoever the enemies are. I've forgotten all the dozens of colors I've killed by now, even if, in the beginning, I was checking each demon for ones I'd seen back home, back in Sunnydale, when I'd watch her fight them...  
  
The coffee makes the bite marks burn like a son of a bitch, but it's something else to keep me going. I never drank this coffee back in Sunnydale, because I had a five foot blonde to do the equivalent. The insects here are scarier than the subterrestrials, and in the wild those zoo animals are _mean_ bastards. On the upside, the fruit is fresh. And I don't have to make friends.  
  
I want to stop drinking this goddamn coffee; it's rotting my head, like the plants rot in the rain.   
  
I don't want this any of this anymore. I'm tired. I want to go home. I want to sleep.  
  
Neither's gonna happen real soon.  
  
  
end  



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